7/05/03 First day as a Tour Guide at Circle Line!!! Then Calliente Cab Company w/Eric, Debi, and friends:








Well, it's my first day on the job. What should have been a lark, has now become a reality. I love it when stuff works out like that. It's a lot more low-stress that way. I never pined for the job. I never sweated over whether or not I would get it. I never thought "what am I going to do if this doesn't work out?" while wringing my hands, or biting my lip. And even today, first day working, the usual external pressures to do well seem to be absent, replaced by the internal desire to just do my best.


In fact, it's been a month since I got the message on my answering machine saying, "congratulations, we're going to give you a shot at this." I got the job, and then heard absolutely nothing. No follow-up. No uniform. No arrangements. Finally, a few days ago, I got a call to come in. I told them I didn't have a uniform. Another tour guide had an extra shirt and an extra pair of epilates in his locker. And so, here I am... first day of work as a tour guide, looking strangely like a sailor. I had another tour guide take this photo of me in the "Tour Guide Room" on North River (Hudson) Pier 43.




I was assigned to boat 12. This boat generally does the "Seaport" run. We leave midtown west empty, we sail for the South Street Seaport, arriving at about 11:30am. Then, every hour and a half, starting at Noon, we do one hour tours to the Statue of Liberty and back. Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty were the parts of the tour I was most nervous about. I studied last night, and made an index card that I brought with me, in case I forgot the name of the statue's designer or the dates Ellis Island was open. Cramming for a test was never this much fun.

Unfortunately, before we left 43rd street, an ambulance pulled up to the bike path in front of the Circle Line pier. A biker got hit by a car, it seems. A sign of things to come? Hopefully not.




We sailed around the tip of Manhattan, and the weather was beautiful. There were no passengers, and the gruff crew wasn't talking to me much, so I practiced the beginning of my 3-hour tour as we sailed down the Hudson... in a whisper, of course. I was learning the timing. It's one thing to be able to tell the story of the Woolworth Building. It's another to fit it into the amount of time you can see it from a constantly moving boat.

We pulled up to the far end of a long pier at the South Street Seaport. Pier 16, to be exact, right next to the big red mall that reads "Pier 17" on the side. There I was, at the end of a long wooden platform, awaiting my first ever batch of passengers, within view of the apartment I once lived in at "Water Street" residence. It's at the very top right of the photograph, on the building just in front of the green-triangle-topped Woolworth Building in the distance.


I had an exhilarating, long, and extremely tiring day, completing 6 1-hour tours in 9 hours. I sailed back to the Circle Line pier on the boat, with no passengers aboard, said goodnight to everyone, and hopped on the subway.


In my uniform, I get great looks in the subway. Some people treat me with the respect of someone in "the service." Other people stare, trying to figure out what kind of service I'm in. Wearing the uniform makes me more conscious of sitting up straight... acting the part, puffing out my chest a little, taking a longer-than-usual stride. But, when I got off the subway at Christopher Street, in the heart of the West Village, nobody looked at me like a real sailor anymore. They looked at me like a different kind of sailor. And that was entertaining to me as well. I was meeting Eric Gewirtz, his girlfriend Debi, and two of their friends, at Calliente Cab Company on 7th Avenue South.




I didn't have time to go home and change out of my uniform first, but they were glad once they saw it. It was silly fun. And so were the Margaritas!




This is what we munched on at the table, as I told them about my day.




Oh, and this was the waiter that took the above photo of all of us.




I had made $11 in tips, and so I got the large (which was more expensive than that.) I was really thirsty after my long day, and so I drank it kind of fast, and soon, didn't feel no pain.




Someone else tried a blue colored margarita.




It was a good time all around, and we all got to catch up with each other. And then I went home and slept very soundly. in the words of Annie: I think I'm gonna like it here (at Circle Line).